Studies in mysticism and certain aspects of the secret tradition / by Arthur Edward Waite.

  • Waite, Arthur Edward, 1857-1942.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Studies in mysticism and certain aspects of the secret tradition / by Arthur Edward Waite. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    344/368 (page 328)
    Masonic lodges of Paris looked on in wonder and dismay, and his invitation to their general assembly, to testify concerning himself and his system, was not a matter for surprise. Whether he attended or not, whether it is true or not that he made his attendance contingent on the Rite of the Philalethes passing under the obedience of his system, so far as Cagliostro was concerned the conference came to nothing, and with all its pretensions to the possession of the lost secrets, to the stone of the philosophers, and the great elixir, Egyptian Masonry also came to nothing; it perished or was entombed with its founder in the prisons of the Inquisition. There is little need to add that, so far as we know anything concerning it, the propaganda which Cagliostro undertook in the name of the transcendental sciences, in the names of Hermes and Isis, had no connection with mysticism, unless after the manner of a travesty. I have said that the chief interest of Masonic history centres in France of the eighteenth century, and the general conclu- sion that may be drawn from this brief enumeration is that every mystic school which then flourished in France, and onward till the year 1825, found its natural centre in Masonry; to that centre they all gravitated : thence they all worked. There is nothing to show that, in respect of the majority, they endeavoured to revolutionise Masonry in their own interest. The Fraternity naturally attracted all mystics to its ranks, and the development of the mystic degrees took place, and also naturally, as a result of that attraction. In a word, French Masonry was the home of Gallic mysticism, and so far as there was mysticism in Germany, it abode in the lodges of the Brotherhood. The Rite of the Strict Observance, founded in 1754 by Baron Hunde, was, according to a popular description, de- voted to the study of the Kabalah, to the search after the Philosophical Stone, to the invocation of spirits, and to necromancy. It might have been on account of the language of the magical rituals that Latin Avas the official tongue of the Chapter; but, as a fact, its religion was Catholic, and the chiefs of the lodge are said to have been vested like bishops of the Roman Church. It is probably for these reasons that the Rite of the Strict Observance was thought to have been